Don't Let it Show
by Trinity Destler
Summary: [oneshot. Post RFB. Onesided SF] If it's getting harder to face every day... don't let it show. Faye reflects on the Bebop's crew and tries to come to terms with being one of those left behind.


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(AN: My first Bebop fanfic. I probably didn't bring anything remotely original, but this song is perfect and I wanted to use it. I'm testing the waters, please let me know what you thought was good (or bad). I might post a longer fic- haven't quite decided yet. Disc: Don't own 'Don't Let it Show', it belongs to the Alan Parson's Project. Don't own the Bebop characters.)

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If it's getting harder to face every day

Don't let it show

Don't let it show

You know, when you've lived longer than you're supposed to, you get to have an interesting outlook on life. Sometimes you think you're lost and always will be, floating aimlessly through stolen time with stolen life. You feel like it's all about to go out the window any second, but you don't even care because you weren't supposed to be here to begin with. Then again, sometimes you feel like you're untouchable, immortal; that nothing in your life will ever change because you've been there doing it for what feels like _so long._

I've lived too long. Maybe those aren't the right words for it, come to think of it, since technically I haven't really lived most of that time. So I guess I've been _alive_ too long, though I'm not really sure anymore if I've lived at all. Depressing, isn't it? Alive all these years, my miraculously extended youth helping me to reach the grand old age of… shit, I don't even know for sure. Eighty or ninety-something. Eighty or ninety-something and I've never lived.

What I do, it should be exciting, it should be a rush, a cheap thrill; all of it should be glamorous and decadent, an endless pursuit of a wild bohemian dream. You get to do what you want when you want however you want it, you get to shoot off guns, drive real fast and blow things up- hell, sometimes you even get paid for it. You answer to nothing and nobody, you don't care about nobody and nobody cares about you… that's the way it was, the way we lived.

What a joke.

When you have no past and no one gives a rat's ass about you and the first thing that you find out about yourself when you wake up alone in a strange new world is that you're so in debt you may as well give up on ever paying it off: _Then_, bounty hunting is sort of a good deal. When you end up freeloading on a ship that at least supports life and happens to lead you to good bounties now and then, that's a _sweet _deal- especially when said ship provides you with partners off of whom you can mooch guilt-free. It's all pretty groovy when you look at it that way. It's great when you realize you really can go out into the universe and live like that.

But wait a second. We've all been around the 'reality' block a few times: you _can't _live like that, that shit is a pipe dream.

Not that bohemian spiel about living life however you feel like living it that day; I mean the 'tude that's supposed to go with bounty hunting. That '_I_ don't give a shit if you get your stupid green-haired ass killed', that 'no skin off _my _nose if you all just drop dead', that 'I can leave any-fucking-time I don't _need _you' shit. No matter how much you tell yourself you can live without anybody, that you're better off alone; or even if you live _with _somebody, if they were gone the next day you won't care. No matter how much you try to convince the world it can never make you hurt again…

People have a way of sneaking up on you.

_Though it's getting harder to take what they say_

_Just let it go, just let it go_

_And if it **hurts **when they mention my name_

_Say you don't know me_

_And if it helps when they say I'm too **blame**_

_Say you **don't own me.**_

I never wanted to care about anyone but myself ever again. Nothing good comes of it, nothing in my experience anyway. I'm sure there are people out there who have lots of beautiful relationships, full and loving and comforting, but I've never met one. That's why I- and probably everybody else in our own little corner of the universe- figured it wasn't worth a price that high just to let somebody in. Maybe you'd feel better for a few minutes, having someone to really talk to, maybe you'd find out something really surprising about someone else and realize you could still care about another human being… but so what?

I hate that shit about 'to have loved and lost…', it's not fucking true. 'Course, you don't know that until after the fact. You can't. And you're too damn young and stupid to grasp it without first hand proof. You go through life being taught that love is this beautiful thing, so wonderful and great that not to experience it is just this Godawful tragedy. Cry me a river for those who never felt like their insides were coming out and their skin was too tight and their eyes were burning and their throat was closed up and their lungs were full of water. Say a prayer for someone who never wanted to die because somebody walked away from them, never felt their heart hit their feet, their voice dwindle to a croak; someone who was never consumed by that violent fucking flame.

Love. If I ever wanted to feel love, take me back to that moment so I can slap some sense into myself.

If I'm really honest with myself I was only really in love once, I mean the Big Love, the movie star love, complete with panoramic kisses and fireworks and climatic music and shit. Sure, I cared about a lot of people over time… but I only felt that touch once- I figure you only ever do, once, no matter who you are- and I know, because it was the last time and I suddenly understood what I went through before was peanuts compared to this.

Love. If I thought I'd finally found the one place in the galaxy where I'd never have this problem again I was dead fucking wrong. And at least before I was always wearing the pants, if you know what I mean, but right from the beginning I had no control over this time. The real time. The _love _time.

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Even if it's taking the easy way out

Keep it inside of you

Don't give in

Don't tell them anything

Don't let it

Don't let it show

I was such an ice queen among the tumultuous cacophony of their hot-headed male emotions. Except those emotions weren't _real. _They hid that better than anybody else I'd ever met (and I've met some space cases in my time), they kept it all in some dark corner of their minds and never talked about it. Never showed it. It was kinda amazing really how they had this unspoken agreement that all things personal were off limits until extensively proven otherwise- or in dire circumstances. It's not that they didn't _care… _It just wasn't _about _caring; it was about a business arrangement that happened to be profitable for all parties.

Sort of.

And I invited myself- I freely admit that- so it's kind of hard to pick at their way of life, which I had no business sticking my nose into at all. Not that it really stopped me. Besides, I thought their way was fabulous, it was exactly what I had always wanted from an environment. Free living, sometimes free food, and no questions asked about anything.

It does sound like we don't care, doesn't it?

Jet cared. Poor Jet, poor responsible, paternal, ever-loving, ever-merciful Jet. The long suffering mediator of every fight aboard the Starship Bebop and the one thing that kept us all from croaking out there because we were too lazy to get off our asses and actually cash in a bounty. He was the only one who acted like we were _friends _and not just some group of strangers who happened to live together due to a bizarre and convoluted twist of fate… And even he was subtle about it, though he did actually feed the dog and phrase things in the form of a request instead of a bulletin. And at least he talked at all with having to be baited.

You know he's the only person out in the whole universe who could give two tenths of a shit whether I live or die? He's that to more people than just me… or… was. Anyway.

It sort of puts a burden on my philosophy of no attachments, doesn't it? That I place so much value on someone knowing I'm alive and at least caring a little bit whether or not that continues to be the case. Really, if I feel the need for that, I'm dependent on people and if I'm dependent on people than everything I ever wanted is shot all to hell. If I even want it anymore.

_Even though you know it's the wrong thing to say_

_Say you don't care_

_Say you don't care_

_Even if you want to believe there's a way_

_I won't be there_

_I** won't be there**_

I told him not to go, you know.

'Where are you going…?'

'_Why _are you going…?'

Would it really have been so difficult to finish what I was trying so hard to say without saying it?

'I don't **want** you to go!'

Shit. It wouldn't have made a difference, I know that- intellectually, anyway- but at least I could have said it. He didn't understand even when I was crying for real for only the second time in my new life, he didn't understand even when I unloaded a handgun over his head and all around him. Wanting to kill him, wanting to save him. If I'd said something, at least he would have fucking _known. _What would it have meant to someone like him? I have not the slightest clue, but he really should have known.

Known what? That the honky tonk woman with attitude which had polluted the once peaceful, spacious air of his home with perfume and irritating blather and mooched all the food that may have actually been kicking around the place had fallen pathetically at his heels. Like a lost puppy. Oh, poor little Faye! Finally finds out where she belongs and it's someplace that she can never, ever go home to, humour her, she's had a sad life. I find out I've go nothing left to belong to only to realize I did belong somewhere all along, in _this _life, not some distant, alien past- too fucking late to save it.

How long did I love him before I knew it? How many times did I catch myself staring at him in absurd fascination, pondering his singular outlook on life. You know, I'm not proud anymore, I fail to see the point this late in the game, so I'm gonna talk about it for the first time- be honest with _myself _for the first time.

I admit it all now. He was beautiful. I stared at him sometimes in this sort of twisted admiration, he was so… beautiful. He was so unpredictable you could entertain yourself indefinitely just by sitting in the same room in which he was happening; not sitting, _happening_. He didn't just occupy space; he chose an area in which to unfold. With all his dramatics and stupidities and arrogance and being obtuse and insensitive…. Somewhere under all that shit he was brilliant, you didn't see it often and even then you had to squint, but somewhere he was really, really brilliant. And serious, isn't that a riot! Serious and complex and fascinating- if I weren't saying it I wouldn't believe it for a second!

But it's true. It's true, and even though I could see that much I could never really figure him out at all, couldn't get passed all that enigma into whatever the hell made him tick. I don't think a single person on the face of any of the planets ever really knew him- all of him. I knew this one side that he was willing to show me, plus another I could see through the cracks- but how many times did I catch glimpses of entirely different men behind those cool, mismatched eyes?

Maybe that's why I love him, because I know he'll never be boring. Stupid reason, huh?

I don't even care. It's not like I'm gonna tell anyone that I love him much less explain _why. _I'm glad Jet doesn't know; I can't dump that sort of shit on him when he already has so much to try to deal with. I don't want him to keep me just because he feels _sorry _for me- it'd be way too embarrassing. Or maybe I just don't want him to know I can feel and be just as weak as every civilian hometown girl with no spunk.

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But if you smile when they mention my name

They'll never know you

And if you laugh when they say I'm to blame

They'll never own you

Even if you feel you've got nothing to hide

Keep it inside of you

Don't give in

Don't tell them anything

Don't let it

Don't let it **show**.

Or maybe I'm too afraid that admitting it will make it real.

God, Spike; you're _killing _me. It eats me up inside to love you the way nothing else ever has, not even not having a past, not even finding out that the past I had was almost worse than not having one. Finding out I couldn't ever go back- that maybe belonging wasn't a place but a state of mind I'd already had and walked out on. None of it ever hurt me the way caring about someone like you has hurt me- none of it ever made me feel so weak.

But I know what you'd say, if you could still talk to me now, _Don't let it show._

That was what you thought about everything.


End file.
